"Slovenliness in Appearance, Carelessness in Writing - Or am I Showing my Age"

 Why, one might ask, with wars in Ukraine and Iran, the political world in turmoil, with extremists on both the right and the left consuming more air time, and with much of the media exchanging skepticism for advocacy – for one side or another – would I write an essay on such a trivial matter? 

 

It’s a good question, and I don’t have a good answer, other than to acknowledge that the idea sprung while watching the documentary, The New Yorker at 100 a few months ago. And I admit to being turned off by the shortcuts in spelling and by the lack of good grammar that I often see in e-mails and text messages.

 

Nevertheless, I had fun with the subject – it should be taken lightly – and  it was an excuse to include a photo of the cover of a wonderful Children’s book, Slovenly Peter by Heinrich Hoffman, originally published in Germany in 1845 and then translated into English by Mark Twain in 1891.

 

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On Monday, Caroline and I leave for two weeks in Rumson, NJ, where she has been going her whole life, and where we have been going for the sixty-two years of our married life. With stops in between, we plan to be back on the 20^th or 21^st of August. Tomorrow, before we leave, you will receive an essay from me on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book 1929. Then you will have almost three weeks of blissful peace, at least from my computer – unless something motivates me to intrude once again. Happy August!

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Slovenliness in Appearance, Carelessness in Writing – Or am I Showing my Age?”

August 1, 2026

 

“laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790

                                                                                                “The Way to Wealth,” 1758 

 

As I get older, I recall the foolishness of youth. One such memory: I was calling on a client – a Hartford insurance company – in 1971. Years afterward, the portfolio manager I was meeting (who became a good friend) told me he had almost cancelled the meeting when he saw this guy with unkempt hair coming down the hall. I looked, he told me later, as though I had stuck my hand in a light socket. Today I keep a photograph of the way I then looked, reminding me of my immature, narcissistic self. 

 

Now I wonder – have we become too slipshod in appearance and careless in communication? It is not just Generation Z and Millennials. This subject came to mind while watching the documentary, The New Yorker at 100. The magazine once employed many of my favorite writers – E.B. White, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. They all worked with the magazine’s first editor, Harold Ross. Photographs of them at the Algonquin Hotel’s “Round Table” show a spirited group, dressed in costumes of the day, suits for men and dresses for women. In contrast, the documentary showed today’s editor David Remnick in a collar-less shirt, sweater and jeans. A writer was shown wearing a baseball cap on backwards. Not to be stuffy about it, but how one dresses does show regard for others. 

 

Deirdre Clemente, a fashion historian who teaches at the University of Nevada Las Vegas wrote: “Americans began the 20^th Century in bustles and bowler hats and ended it in velour sweatsuits and flannel shirts.” Writing in the April 10-12 issue of The New York Sunabout a production of “Madame Butterfly” at the New York Metropolitan Opera, critic Vivek Nagrani wrote: “The blur of ‘athleisure,’ hoodies and distressed denim, made me question if I was at the opera or MacDonald’s.” He deplored such dress, as it showed disrespect for the composer Giacomo Puccini, the artists who sang, and the institution itself.

 

This preference for casualness is also manifested in the way we communicate. Eighty years ago George Orwell wrote Politics and the English Language. In it he lamented that authors had become lazy in terms of “staleness of imagery” and “lack of precision.” What would he say today about what people post on social media, text and e-mail? We communicate through writing more than we ever did. However, “Missives...” wrote Rachel Louise Ensign and Alexander Wexler in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, “show a striking disregard for spelling, punctuation and proper grammar.” And offloading one’s personal e-mails, texts and postings to AI signals a lack of respect.

 

In his register of thirteen virtues, Benjamin Franklin listed both order (“Let all your things have their places”) and cleanliness (“Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation”). Good advice, but perhaps today’s sloppiness is a passing trend. Over decades tastes and habits change. And children grow up to become grandparents. Remember the neighbor in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” watching George Bailey and Mary Hatch? He grumbles, walking back inside: “Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people.”

 

But enough! With persistent wars, polarized politics, frothy markets and declining birthrates, slovenliness in dress and poor grammar in messaging are not high on my list of concerns.